Facing My Fears, Journal Page March 2 2010
I’ve always believed that even if you think you don’t have an artistic bone in your body, if you try collaging you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish. You don’t have to know how to draw, paint or sculpt yet you are doing all these things when you collage. When you pick up a pair of scissors and cut, you’re drawing lines around forms: making shapes. When you choose images with specific colours, textures and light, you’re painting or even photographing. When you choose architectural elements to build your collage, you’re sculpting and giving dimension to a world. Modern and contemporary artists such as painter Pablo Picasso and photographer Jerry Uelsmann have used these techniques to further the bounds of their artistic mediums. I’ve always believed too that collage is magical. If you don’t believe me, just check out Uelsmann’s photographs which he produces by “collaging” or photomontaging various photographic negatives before printing them. You can invent or conjure up just about anything with images from magazines, papers of any kind or recycling scraps from life. You can bring into existence things that have never been seen before. Or you can take ordinary things and give them a new extraordinary take as can be seen in this Picasso collage. In my own work when I “speak” through collage forms such as journaling, for example, I can physically take on any form… become anyone or anything: any age, any size, any gender, or any ethnicity to express my feelings on various subjects – this can be a powerful thing as it has given me the ability to fully express myself in ways I couldn’t otherwise. In viewing my journal pages someone commented that they couldn’t find “me” in them and then suddenly realized that the variety of main characters they were viewing were me! I like that I can time travel and shape shift through collage. It’s such a flexible medium. Every day we are bombarded by imagery from billboard ads, film, television, music videos, magazines, the internet, etc. – these fragmentary images we visually inhale have the power to inform who we are and what we are to become. I have found collaging is a perfect vehicle to directly express the ways in which these inform our identities.
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